Dustup 2016 – a multi-platform project of Campaign Outsider (Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter to come) – is dedicated to chronicling the most notable antics of the current presidential field. After all, there are (at least) 22 stories in the Naked Ambition.

And, in this endless Summer of Trump, it seems only right to begin the wild rumpus with the Hair Apparent to the GOP presidential nomination. If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function,” well, Donald Trump is a lot smarter than the harddusting staff has given him credit for.

Trump Likens His Schooling to Military Service in Book

Donald J. Trump, who received draft deferments through much of the Vietnam War, told the author of a coming biography that he nevertheless “always felt that I was in the military” because of his education at a military-themed boarding school.

Mr. Trump said his experience at the New York Military Academy, an expensive prep school where his parents had sent him to correct poor behavior, gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

Uh-huh. That’s really going to happen at a “military-themed” boarding school, which is sort of like a “Catholic-themed” Jesuit prep school.

Trump Wants CNN to Donate GOP Debate Proceeds to Veterans

Donald Trump is demanding CNN donate the advertising revenue from the next GOP debate to a charity that benefits veterans.

The presidential hopeful wrote a letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker Tuesday in which he noted that ad rates for the GOP debate were being sold at a nearly 4,000% increase (from $5,000 to $200,000) and said that the “tremendous increase in viewer interest and advertising is due 100% to ‘Donald J. Trump.’”

Drive you nuts graf:

“I believe that all profits from this broadcast should go to various veterans groups, a list of which I will send you in the near future. The veterans of our country, our finest people, have been treated horribly by our government and its ‘all talk and no action’ politicians.’”

Seriously? The guy who’s all talk and no military action gets to lecture other White House wannabes?

Maybe it’s time to revise Fitzgerald’s definition of a first-rate mind. Something along the lines of this:

“The test of a first-rate idiot is the ability to hold two opposed ideas at the same time and still retain the ability to campaign for the presidency.”

Donald Trump, of course, is also the test of a news media that’s essentially abdicated its responsibility to serve the public interest.